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Emily has steadily slid into alcoholism. If that were not bad enough, I was once an alcoholic. Little over a decade ago. Yes, if you’ve read enough of this blog you’d realized that would’ve made me 15 or 16 when I stopped. I started drinking when I was around 9. Life in my little world was becoming a personal, private hell.
When I was a kid, I was offered 5th grade instead of 3rd. I prize for testing in the 99.9th percentile. Of all the kids, in all of The States, I was of the smartest. They even gave me an IQ test. The result: 152. Genius starts at 135, Supragenius at 155. It seemed I was the Sun amidst my light bulb-like peers. But as I said, “I was offered.” Given the choice, I, a scared 7 year old child, choose to dim. I choose 3rd grade over 5th. Much to the disappointment of my overbearing mother and habitually absent father. Years later, I would look back on that defining moment in my early youth and say to myself, “Why give a child that choice?” To this day, of all the mistakes of my life, I wish I could change That One. I would give up everything for that chance back. I don’t think my parents knew that that choice was not one any child should be allowed. Choices should be left to those who understand the consequences of choosing the wrong path. And that is not something a child can do. Children have little foresight beyond a single day. How could they know of how something could so drastically effect their future when they can’t even grasp the concept of “The Real World”?
TO YOU PASSING READER, I GIVE YOU THIS WARNING:
If your child is given this choice, take it from them. For this choice, IS most Dire & Grave. This is not theirs to make. And neither is it yours. Their very birthright is to advance, not to be allowed to stagnate. Understand this if nothing else.

Now, the choice to dim being made, I sat though 3rd grade. I mean that quite literally. I failed. I did no homework. I did not raise my hand in class. I purposefully gave the wrong answer when called upon. All in an attempt to look stupid. Well, needless to say, it worked. As the kids I had been with left for the 4th grade, I was forced to stay in 3rd, in the same seat, in the same class. How sardonic it was that the reason I chose to 3rd over 5th to begin with was for these very “friends” who now had abandoned “the idiot” I had become.
That second 3rd grade year was one of the toughest years of my young life. Indeed the toughest up ‘til that point. Disparaged & disparaging of myself as I was, I made a new “friend”. Coincidentally, this boy from my new 3rd grade class and his younger brother lived just up street from me. His father was an alcoholic. And his favorite pastime, getting his children and their new friend drunk.
And so began my spiral towards an edge I’d no sooner forget than I would the back of my own hands. Truth be told, I wish never to forget that part of me. It keeps me whole. To forget that would be to forget the fact that I overcame something so powerfully addictive, so transcendentally invocative and yet so reproachfully wanton. If comparable to a biblical reference, it is not unlike the sins of The Watchers which beget the Nephilim. Alcoholism is the sins of Lust & Gluttony combined in a heady mixture of Pain & Suffering.
How does a child become an alcoholic. First, you must understand that not all alcoholics drink every day or even once a week. Binge Alcoholics are those people who don’t drink but get so toasted they end up waking up the next day in a stranger’s house unaware of how they got there, or even where “There” was. These alcoholics are the worst kind they can hide it well from friends and family. Only letting it rear it’s ugly head in the most opportune of moments. Binge drinkers usually have separate “drinking friends” apart from their “regular friends”, and for good reason. Their real friends might tell their family. And they don’t want that, now do they.
I “tried” AA twice when I was a 15. The first time they said I was too young. That’s ironic. I had to promise not to laugh or ridicule the other “freaks” like myself before they let me in. I went a few times before hugging these overweight, sweaty men became too much. The second try it was the B.O. of a 36, or 37, year old 400 lbs woman with these enormous sweaty tits. She smothered me in them and in my gasp for air my tongue got to taste that sweat, very personally. I’d had a phobia of germs ever since I was 10. That was the final straw. “Enough of this stupid shit,” I’d said and I never went back.
The next year, I had gotten into some legal trouble (completely unrelated to my own alcohol problem) over some drugs. They were not mine, before you judge me. I had taken them from a friend who was a foster kid. She had taken them from the real culprit. I didn’t want her precarious home life to be ruined, so I ruined mine in her stead. I have never regretted that choice. Not for a single moment. But back to the subject.
I was forced to go to Gateway. Gateway actually worked. They people were all kids my own age. I actually had classes with 4 of the 9 there. We became closer, I’d like to think anyway. One day we were asked to talk about our early home life with a focus on why we started drinking, and by comparison to one boy in particular, I thought, “Well fuck, my life ain’t THAT bad!” That was it. I quit cold turkey. It was a matter of shedding myself of those “drinking friends”, avoiding the chance to go to parties, and reining in that desire. 10 years later, I can count the number of times I’ve been drunk on only 4 fingers and total times I have drank number maybe 40. I drink usually about 3 or 4 times a year. 3 shots of Smirnoff Vodka. Preferably, Orange Twist.
But now, I am faced with watching my closest loved one, My Emily, trodden down a similar dark path. It is beyond hard for me. To her, I am The Embodiment of Strength, of Honor, of Integrity and a far cry from her shores. She assumes that these things will hold me bound to her. But, the fact is, the opposite seems true. I have asked, I have beg, I have yelled, we have argued and it has been to no avail.
I am at a crossroads now. She has made it so. Today, I came home to find an empty 12-pack on the kitchen counter and 6 empty cans on the coffee table. She has begun to flaunt her weakness in front of me. When we argued this time she said, “You don’t even have a problem.” How wrong of her. My problem is her. Because her problem is mine, and our babies. I wanted to beat her until she couldn’t breathe. She knew it. She said, “I’m breaking up with you,” half-hearted.
It was more of a threat than a statement of fact. But, I told her, “I don’t care what you do. Just pay your half of the bills and stay the fuck away from me.” My crossroads is this do I shoulder the burden she has become upon my back as my very heart withers at the sight of her decay in the hopes she regains her footing on this world. Or, do I leave, children in hand, to the farthest reaches of this Earth? Do I stay here in Pennsylvania, the onset of the spiritually-numbing winter approaching, or do I take my leave to Tennessee, where a similar bitterness will follow me until I, like this relationship, to dust hence?
Either choice I do not wish to make. They are not light choices. They will effect my children’s growth and outlook on the world. Either way will taint it, taint them with sorrow. How can she ask me to carry her crippled form though the same Plaguerot Wastes which had once crippled me? If she asks ever at all.
At this moment, I am stuck with a phrase:

“Seek comfort in the next life, for you shall find none in this one.”

I think I’ll never know whether those words were of someone else or of my own design, but I feel distinctly that somewhere in The Heavens, Samyaza is smiling with the whisper still fresh upon his lips. What vile portent this brings as a unnatural dark night befalls like a miasma.

My favorite holiday is back again. I love Halloween. It is the only holiday I really celebrate. Screw Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, they are just times people spend times with their families. BORING. Plus I really have little in common with mine. The exceptions are my aunt, Fran, who listens to the same alternative music as me, and my grandma, who loves to talk about anything interesting. (And I don’t mean gossip.)

But, Halloween is all about you. Hedonistic and, in a way, freeing. You can recapture your youth on Halloween as no other day in the entire year. You can be as weird or as normal as you want and everyone will like it. What would you say to a guy dressed up as a nun on any other day of the year.

Here’s some pictures of me and my friends at a Halloween contest on a karaoke night. Two of my favorite things in one!

This is Me!!!

From Left to Right: Sean, Doug, Tex, & Me

At first I went for the Boogie Man. Then After I got 3rd Place, I took off the mask and was a swashbuckling pirate’s ghost.

This whole week has seriously blown major ass!!! I lost both my favorite cigarettes and one of my favorite bands just a few days apart. Now I’ve talked about my Obama hatred over losing my Blacks. So I’ll get off of that dead horse and move on to this one. I was on my last pack of Blacks when my girlfriend told me they kicked Craig Owens out of Chiodos. A harrowing sadness overcame me then. Followed by the memories of why I liked them in the first place. Now before I continue further let me just say I fucking hate screamy/growly shit! My girlfriend listens to Job for a Cowboy. That shit makes me want to rip out their throats with a rusty spoon! Some of her other stuff I can stand maybe one or two songs from a band.

Anyways, Derek left in March now Craig’s gone now too? Who the Fuck is in the Band? Yeah, two fucking guitarists… Fuck that! I don’t care who they get to replace Craig or Derek, but with what everyone is saying about it, let me just say this:

If I buy an car witout an engine or a tires, is it really still a fucking car?

I don’t know why they’ve come, but for the last week I keep seeing big black bullfrogs out of the corners of my eye. Last night, I came around the corner and one was just sitting there. I looked at him and he looked at me. Then, just like that, he jumped past my right leg and was gone. I know he wasn’t real. He was like a 3d shadow. But why frogs, I wonder? What do frogs represent?

Okay, so I have a big pet peeve with people saying the wrong color. Don’t quite get what I mean. Have you ever had a friend point out someone by the color of their shirt and you couldn’t find them because they gave you the wrong color? (“There’s Doug.” “Where?” “He’s wearing the green shirt.” “Huh? Oh, there. That’s yellow.” “No, it’s not.” “Next time your at my house I’ll pull out my Prismacolors and show you Chartreuse.”) I get I’m anal about it. But, is it that hard to tell the difference? I mean even if you didn’t know the specific color’s name (Chartreuse, in this case) why would you say green over yellow, if it looks more yellow than green? And this goes both ways, too. I can name about 300 colors in English (probably a lot more if I really thought about it), but I could only MAYBE name each color in a 24-pack of crayons in japanese. I get very aggravated by it. It make me feel dumb. If I had been raised overseas I could have been able to say more than just English color names. I want to find out if Prismacolor sells alcohol markers in Japan just so I can have them shipped to me here. I care more about finding these kinds of things out than I do about making sure I don’t yubisute someone’s name. (I think that’s the right word? Where you don’t put -san, -chan, or -kun on the end of their name. Right?)

Despite being an american my ancestors didn’t come over here until the late 1800s so maybe that’s why tea has been more common in our households than coffee. Which, by the way, I hate. My Favorites are Madagascar Red, Earl Grey, & English Breakfast. Sadly though, my tea palette is limited to commercially available teas stocked by grocers. Even the health nut place near me doesn’t have enough for me to feel like I’ve done more than scratched the surface of the tea world. I think this is another reason I want to go to Japan. I just realized it. So what’s your favorite tea(s)?